


Lab Renovations

by Jackson_Overland_Frost



Series: It's that AU [7]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, IKEA, Literally just two boys doing interior decorating, M/M, Renovations, Science, The Avengers - Freeform, They’re only mentioned though, World Market, and tired cashiers, and unnamed bookstore, bots, it’s implied that it’s Barnes and Nobles though, literally just fluff, random people - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 10:46:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18119255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackson_Overland_Frost/pseuds/Jackson_Overland_Frost
Summary: (More backstory) Tony got the boys a new lab, but it’s literally just an empty room. He also gives them a budget.





	Lab Renovations

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! Hope you enjoy, and please read the end notes <3

Tony was great, he really was, but the room was a bit… bland. Of course, the two were deliriously happy to get their own lab, and they knew Tony just wanted to get them out of his hair and make them stop losing his tools, but the room he had presented them with was empty. Like, completely. The walls of the L shaped room were made of dark brown hardwood, and a skylight that covered almost half of the ceiling was the sole light source. There wasn’t even a lab table. 

“I’m giving you two a budget of $25,000 dollars for the whole space, tools and materials and stuff included,” Tony told them, pulling them out of their stupor. “You can make it look however you want. Go nuts, I guess.” And with that, he walked out of the doorway, leaving the two boys to screech at each other and furiously plan how to spend their money on the floor of their brand spanking new lab. 

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo. 

 

The pair wandered through the endless halls of the IKEA, getting lost in it’s identical hallways and giggling at their failed pronunciations of literally all of the names. Peter and Harley each pushed around a cart, both of which were already half full, one holding two boxes of giant metal cabinet, and the other full of couch and table. They were one the hunt for a lab bench, a bookshelf, and some more tables and chairs. 

Harley was also vlogging, just for the fun of it. He was already kind of internet famous, and even though Peter couldn’t be in it, he could still be cameraman. For those of you that have already read Instagram Incident, this is the moment where Peter is finally introduced as Harley’s “lab partner”.

“Nobody is going to care about us shopping for furniture,” Peter had protested when Harley pulled out his camera. Harley only smirked like the evil evil child that he was.

“Worry not, young grasshopper. I shall teach you the ways of making people like you!”

“Harley I’m literally only nine months younger than you.”

But nonetheless, here they were, filming in a random IKEA, purely for the sake of it, Peter having given up protesting.  
“Hey everyone!” Harley said into the camera, which was actually a small bot that currently rested on Peter’s head, nestled among the curls of his hair. “Today we’re going furniture shopping for the new lab Tony just gave us. Me and my lab partner have lots of plans for this place, so this will probably turn out to be a vlog series.”

“It’s my lab partner and I, actually,” Peter interrupted from behind the camera, “but go off, I guess.”

The cambot flitted about throughout the trip, though it was careful not to catch Peter in any of the frames. Suddenly, Harley spotted the perfect bookshelf sitting a little bit away from them. It was made of dark wood and it was huge- plenty of room for the books they were probably going to go shopping for soon.

“Dude look! It’s the good kush!” He said, pointing frantically in it’s direction. The camera zoomed in of the bookshelf as Peter’s voice sounded in the background.

“This is the IKEA, how good can it be?”

They grabbed one of the boxes of bookshelf, Peter’s super strength really serving its purpose, though the viewers didn’t know that, and continued walking down the hall. A few minutes later, they were strolling through the small hardware section of the store.

“Hey Harley, this tape measure sale says we can buy one get one free,” Peter said, examining the clearance sign in front of a huge collection of tape measures in one of those cardboard crate things. “That means that if we buy five, you get five for free!”  
Harley looked straight into the camera, which, for once, was not on Peter’s head. It was on his shoulder. 

“Dude, go big or go home. We need forty tape measures. At least.”

“Alright, forty tape measures total, for the low low price of… twenty one dollars and 20 cents, if we add tax.”

“No, I think sales tax in New York is 8.47%.”

“Well that’s hecking stupid, thanks government. Anyways that bumps up our price to twenty one dollars and forty eight cents because New York is dumb and also bankrupt. Go NYC.” The camera cut to a huge pile of tape measures in the Harley’s cart as he did jazz hands at the mess. 

After buying everything on their list, as well as a couple of extra things they didn’t actually need, they headed to the cash register. The cashier, some dead inside college student probably, didn’t even blink an eye as they rang up the nine normal-ish items and then the forty individual tape measures, which they still thought they had gotten an incredibly good deal on. Their total came out to $2559.68, which was admittedly not that bad considering they were buying furniture, but Peter and Harley both balked a little at the price. They dealt with it though, especially considering that it was only like 10% of their budget. Realizing how much somebody could buy 25,000 dollars was kind of like a getting hit with a bus, and so was realizing that Tony trusted them on how they spent this money.

Next up, they really had to give the place some renovations. Hmm, maybe they should have done that before they went shopping for furniture…

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo. 

 

The two boys soon solved the problem of where to put the piles of boxes while they renovated the lab. Not that Peter was happy about the dozen boxes scattered across the floor of his spider-room, but he could walk on the ceiling so he had no right to complain. (I know they only bought nine things. The other four boxes are for the tape measures.) For now though, the two pored over Harley’s laptop and tried to choose which color of carpet they wanted to install into the floor. 

“It can’t be white,” Harley complained. “Stains will never come out!”

“We aren’t getting a green hecking carpet, babe,” Peter said, closing the tab Harley had just opened. 

“Well what about black?” Harley pointed at a pitch black carpet in the bottom corner of the screen as Peter scrolled up. 

“Harley that literally does not fit in with the aesthetic we’re going for At All.”

“Well, what about this gray one?”

“Harley wtf that carpet is so hecking expensive.”

“Babe we have so much money-”

They bought the gray one. 

Hardly a day later they were sitting in Peter’s room trying to order a giant chalkboard off of the internet. And the key word there is trying. You would not believe how difficult it is to order a giant chalkboard off of the internet, okay? Buying one probably isn’t even that hard. The real problem here is trying to find one. These two had already been on countless websites and the largest chalkboard they had found was 30 inches wide and also over a hundred dollars. Seriously, internet. They just want a nice huge hecking chalkboard and the nicest once you can scrape up is only two and a half feet wide and as expensive as a cart full of groceries from Costco. America why. 

In case you were wondering why the largest blackboard being only about two feet wide is a problem (I’m sure you are), it’s because they were looking for a black board that was about eight feet tall and twenty six feet wide. I’m sure you can understand how frustrated they are now. 

Harley glanced out the window, and then down at his watch. 

“Hey Pete, it’s like, 12:30. We’ve literally been looking at chalkboards for three hours. Maybe we should take a break and have some lunch?”

Peter clicked on a picture of a man standing in front of a huge chalkboard and scrolled down to the description.  
“EXPRESS YOURSELF - Use our convenient blackboard sticker to express your creativity, give you plenty of room for writing menus, sweet messages, to-do lists and more”

Peter wanted to cry. This was literally the largest one they’d found, at four feet tall, but it was a sticker. An actual, not even kidding, sticker. Peter swore he could feel tears coming out of his eyes. Why was this literal sticker fifty dollars? He could feed Aunt May for half a week with that much money. Fifty dollars was a week’s worth of lunch money. Fifty dollars is a day’s work on minimum wage. It’s literally just a sticker. Wtf.

Harley patted Peter’s back comfortingly as he buried his neck into Harley’s shoulder, and helped him down the stairs after closing the laptop. Peter’s eyes held a sort of dazed horrified look as Harley urged him into the kitchen for lunch. Steve, who had reheated last night’s lasagna for everyone, handed them their plates, and looked surprised to see them actually sit down at the table instead of going back upstairs to do whatever they were working on. Natasha and Sam were the only ones eating eating with them, one of which took one look at the dead look in Peter’s eyes and straight up left the room with his plate. Natasha looked at Peter, and then at Harley, shook her head, and kept eating. The rest of the meal passed in silence. 

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.

 

Eventually they found a chalkboard they enjoyed, which was great but also really expensive, and also a set of stairs (kind of) so that they could go to and from the spider-room, which was conveniently where they had dumped all the furniture after their IKEA run. Now that they had gotten all of the big stuff out of the way, there were a few more bits of furniture they had to get. In particular, chairs, a beanbag, cushions, and a heck ton of plants. AKA, the stuff they didn’t want to or couldn’t buy online. It was also an excuse to get out of the tower while random people painted the walls and installed lights and carpet and stairs etc etc. It was all very loud and annoying, so they really wanted to stick around as little as physically possible.

So, two extra bois want aesthetic furniture and also to get as far from the tower as possible while also not going an unreasonably far distance. Yeah, they went to World Market. By the way, in case you either don’t live in New York or don’t know it stupidly well due to doing an excessive amount research for a fanfiction, the nearest World Market to Stark Tower, which is in Manhattan, is in east Brooklyn. Only a 30ish minute drive, so it’s checks all the marks. 

Harley was filming again, with the same camera bot as before. Peter had gotten kind of tired of it flitting around and chilling on his head, so he had somehow convinced to hang from his neck like a normal camera. Since this was an actual shop and not an alternate dimension like most IKEAs clearly are, Harley actually went ahead and asked one of the employees if they could film in the store. They said yes though, so all was well.

So, like good children, they first went to the very specific section of the store that literally just sells chairs. I’m not even kidding, okay? In all World Markets there’s a place where there’s a bunch of chairs lined up and then even more hanging on the wall, just chilling.

Peter immediately gravitated to a distressed kind of vintage wooden chair that’s painted a grayish green, but the paint is peeling a little, and the wood underneath is some sort of light gray-brown color. You know what I mean. On top sits a bright sunflower yellow seat cushion that’s tied to the back of the chair with those little seat cushion strings. There’s a really faint floral pattern print on the cushion with a slightly lighter yellow and anyone can tell it’s super soft just by looking at it. The cambot zooms in on it (it would zoom in on Peter’s face but it’s not allowed to) as Peter just repeatedly whispers “Oh my god, oh my god,” under his breath. 

Harley, meanwhile, just runs towards a hecking stool. Like, a straight up barstool that goes up to his elbow in height and is painted jet black. He scrambles up onto it in record time, which is frankly quite impressive, and then just kind of sits there like a proud child until Peter comes and makes him get off.

“Harley please don’t get that stool. You’re going to regret it the second you want to lean back in your seat and fall off your chair, and I refuse to be subjected to your complaining. Please, Harley. Do not get that stool I swear to goodness gracious and those powers which I hold within.” 

At this point Peter is literally holding Harley back from getting back onto the stool and it would be comedy gold if the cambot was allowed to record it. Alas, the world shall never know. He eventually settles on what is basically a bright red armchair which does not fit their aesthetic at all, but Peter deals in order to make him stop trying to sit on that hecking stool.  
Next on the grocery list is cushions, so the boys both simultaneously decide to ignore the list and go the snack section of the store instead, because even though World Market is listed as a furniture store online, is still sells amazing snacks. Seriously, where else are you going to get mint flavoured chocolate chips? 

“Literally any Target ever?” you say as you stare at your screen in confusion. But no. I’m not talking about what are basically tiny Hershey’s Kisses, no. I’m talking about thin slices of flavoured chocolate that are shaped like potato chips and are also delicious. Also you can basically only get them at World Market. 

So now that my tangent is over, let’s catch up with our boys, who went through the entire snack section and basically put every other item into their basket because they’re failures and also hungry growing boys. At some point they also started going through the liquor section and horrendously mispronouncing all the names for the camera before giggling hysterically and collapsing on the floor. It was here that the literal robot decided that it had to be the responsible one here and proceeded to drag Peter and Harley to separate parts of the store to look for the last few items on their list. Peter quickly found a few cushions and bounded over to where Harley and the shopping cart were inspecting a large dark green beanbag, which also eventually went into the cart. They then both proceeded to wheel the entire thing to the checkout line, while the tired cashier stared incredulously at the precariously balanced pile of two chairs, five cushions, and a beanbag, not to mentions the half dozen snacks scattered in various places. 

The cashier was pretty quick, to be fair to them, and the two headed out soon after. Peter got more than a few stares from passerby as he carried far more than humanly possible (ie. two chairs,) while also not dropping any of it, nor stumbling. In other news Harley is still trying to convince Peter that he is the best boyfriend of all time, and not just because Peter can bench press him. How fun.

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.

 

The lab was almost done, with just furniture to put together and space to fill up with books and pillows and chemicals. Hip hip hooray.

Harley and Peter had struggled with putting the bookshelf together using the IKEA given instructions for several hours before finally getting it to be where they wanted it to be. After that entire failure of a time, they decided to force the Avengers to do it instead under the guise of “team bonding exercises” and went back out into the wild to buy some books for their newly built shelf.

I mean, they’re here to buy some productive books, like annoyingly expensive college physics texts, but Harley and Peter both immediately run towards the fiction sections because that’s what really matters, isn’t it? Harley grabs a copy of Great Gatsby as he runs by because it’s iconic and low key also pretty gay, and Peter shoves Tom Sawyer into his book bag because it’s a classic and he’s a failure who lives for these kinds of things. At some point one of them grabs every Joseph Fink/Jeffrey Cranor book on the shelves because gay and also because they’re nerds. Harley finds himself in the “children’s fiction” section of the store getting one of every Percy Jackson books before meeting up with Peter in the upstairs Starbucks café thing. Peter himself had meanwhile grabbed all the Harry Potter books (but not Cursed Child because that one is shameful and everyone agrees) as well as strolling across the nonfiction section for Alexander Hamilton and that book of Emily Dickinson’s poems that he saw the last time he was here. He had also gotten some of the books that they had actually came for, including a set of science papers by one Bruce Banner. Also, according to the evidence in Harley’s own book bag, they had also emptied out the notebook/journal section. 

The cashier was actually way less surprised by the sheer amount of books they were buying than they expected her to be, but then again, various book lovers probably bought more than this on a regular basis so I guess it makes sense? Besides, they had hardly bought enough for their actually huge bookshelf, but they still have a few stops to make before they head back to the tower. Also, it wasn’t even lunch time yet. 

They stopped at a random used book store on the side of the street and strolled on in, stopping before they reached the actual bookshelves to shake hands. 

“Five books each?” Harley asks.

“Yeah. Five minute time limit, and thickest book wins,” Peter responds.

“And loser buys lunch,” they finish in unison, before taking off through the shelves towards the back of the store. This is because, as we all know of course, the thickest books are pretty consistently in the back of the store and they literally only have five minutes and are both already full of internal panic. The good kind this time though. They both immediately make a grab for the dictionaries, Harley landing the thickest one out of pure luck and Peter settling for the second thickest before literally vaulting over shelves to get to the encyclopedias. 

The tired old man who probably owned the store stared in shock as he grabbed an entire set and shoved it into a bag on the floor before climbing the shelves like a ladder to grab the giant history textbook right near the ceiling. Before he could tell him off for getting dirt on the books though, he was off again, bolting through the store and leaving the bag full of encyclopedia on the floor. 

“Sorry, sir!” Peter yelled over his shoulder.

Harley and Peter raced each other for The Iliad And The Odyssey and Gone With the Wind, getting one each. Harley also got It by Stephen King and stopped by Peter’s encyclopedia bag, but Peter managed to get the only copy of a study bible. Then, just in time, both their watches started beeping unfortunately loudly, and the kids met up at the front of the store, Peter grabbing the bag of encyclopedia and putting it behind him as the two sat across from each other at the small window table. 

Each one took out their books one by one and placed one on top of another, Peter seeming to be in the lead due to his copy of GWtW and the bible, until Harley pulls out a huge copy of Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and suddenly his stack towers over Peter’s by almost an inch. Peter is staring at the winning book with wide eyes even as they’re walking out of the store, at which point he kisses the annoyingly smug grin right off Harley’s dumb face. 

After lunch at Delmar’s, the last stop was Dr. Strange and the Sanctum, because they obviously also wanted whatever awesome magic books the doctor could spare. Also, neither of them had seen Stephen Strange in basically forever, especially since he almost never visited the tower.

“Please?” asked Peter and his puppy-dog-eyes at the Sanctum’s front door. “Only what you don’t really need anymore, and it isn’t like we’ll use them for evil”

Stephen just sighed and led them through his library to give them an extra copy of his grimoire and also eighteen more books that Harley made Peter carry because “who’s the one with super-strength is this relationship?” and other nonsense. He then proceeded to chase them out and tell them to “please never come back unless it’s an actual emergency,” and then shut the door in their faces because he’s rude and also busy. 

They turned to each other.

“Welp,” Harley said. “That was actually easier than I expected it to be.”

 

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.

 

The lab was finally done, after about two weeks of work setting stuff up, and then three more weeks in the lab trying to get their ideas for lighting to actually work, and then over a month after that to create bots and shove their AIs in the ceiling. It was all very stressful to be honest. A bit over two months doesn’t seem like a long time, but every minute they spent in Tony’s lab instead of their own physically pained them at this point. 

Basically the only thing that stayed the same was that the lab was still L shaped, consisting of a long skinny end with a shorter equally skinny end attached to the bottom. The main entrance is a door near the end of the long part of the lab and when you walk in there’s a stairway going up made of wooden slabs embedded into the wall. After a little incident consisting of a tired Peter accidentally stumbling off the side of the stairs while staring Tony in the eye, they also installed black railings to the edges.

The entrance is sort of near the end where the stairs are but the first thing you’d actually see when you walk in is this table/counter with huge metal cabinets filled with many wonderful stuffs on either side. The lab table is a bit away from the stairs because the stairs are made of wood and nobody wants them to catch on fire. Seriously. No, they don’t know from experience.

About a foot or so above the lab table is a strip of warm tinted fluorescent lighting so that the boys can actually see what they’re doing while they work. That general area of the Parkner Lab is pretty dark so they actually really need it. Never mind the skylight, we’ll get to that soon.

Across from the table on the same side of the room as the door is a row of at least four almost identical circular charging ports for various robots. And by almost identical I mean identical is all ways besides the different colored accents on their bases. They also had various name tags hung on the wall about two or so feet above each port, sporting names like “Chad,” “Pants,” or “Lizard.”

By the way, in this section of the lab, besides the lights embedded into the wall above the lab table, the main lighting comes from these sheets of metal folded into the shape of paper airplanes which fly about near the ceiling. From each airplane hangs a round ball about the size of a walnut which appears to be made of glass, other than the fact that they glow with a warm/gold-tinted light. The airplanes vary in size and all have a random flight path while simultaneously somehow never bumping into one another. This is because each one has a tiny camera on it’s nose and is remotely controlled by Sofia, Harley’s AI. You see why the lighting took three weeks to perfect yet?

Anyways, on the same wall as the table but separated from it by the huge metal cabinets is a large comfortable looking couch. It’s made of some sort of soft dark purple cloth and it’s large enough for two teenage boys to comfortably lay side by side. On one end of the couch there’s a soft fuzzy gray blanket and scooted up next to the couch on the same side is a bedside table looking thing made of dark wood. Well, I say the blanket is folded and neat and stuff but actually it’s usually just bundled up or draped messily over the back of the couch. The other side of the room features shelves of various chemicals as well a bunch of tools hanging on hooks in rows. The aesthetic of this part of the lab can be vaguely described as fantasy tavern.

Like I said, this part of the lab is relatively dark, (not counting the strip of light above the table and the airplanes flying about, of course) and it’s separated from the rest of the lab by a dark gray curtain, hanging not from the ceiling, but from a metal pole a little over a foot below it. The curtain is rather thin and quite light, but it’s completely opaque, keeping all the light out. Light can still makes its way in through the space in between the pole and the ceiling, though, and the airplanes can be seen flying through this space.

On the other side of the curtain appears to be an entirely different room, as the entire aesthetic suddenly changes drastically. The entire ceiling is glass and the floor is a sand colored hardwood in the places where its not covered in a dark gray carpet the exact same color as the curtain. Nearest the curtain right near the wall is a carpeted area with two wooden desks separated by a large leafy potted plant which really resembles a tree. Both are piled with school work, but one is noticeably messier than the other. In front of the messier desk sits a bright red armchair, and in front of the other is a light green chair with a yellow cushion. The space the curtain opens up to has no carpet, but there are several more plants, as well as a glass table on which several of the airplanes rest, seemingly charging in the sunlight. When they’re resting on the table it’s pretty easy to see the small solar panels on top of the airplanes.

At the end of the short part of the L is a floor to ceiling chalkboard, of the kind you see in movies. It’s black with a wooden frame and it’s almost completely covered in white chalk in two very distinctly different handwritings. One is a tilted messy scrawl and the other loopy near-unreadable cursive. The entire area under the chalkboard is carpeted and it contains an easily movable wooden ladder, and one the same wall as the curtain, what could be considered a reading nook. Said nook consists of a large gray-green beanbag, more potted plants, and a massive bookshelf, which is filled with an assortment of reading material, ranging from fantasy novels to college textbooks or ancient looking leather bound personal journals. The aesthetic of this part of the lab might be ‘comfortable greenhouse’ or ‘library with plants’.

Karen and SOFIA were finally both in the walls and stuff of the lab, and the spider-bots Harley and Peter had designed had settled into their charging ports in the lab. Each of the bots were kind of like Dum-e; not really AIs but intelligent-ish with a learning mechanism. Speaking of, the bots were spherical with a flat top that dips in a little bit- that’s how they look in their charging ports. Each one actually has eight legs that retract into itself and they look like mechanical spiders when they move around, although they don’t actually have heads. The bots are all a dark metallic gray color with accents in various colors that resemble a circuit board. The different colored accents is how you can tell them apart, and the patterns match up with the ones on the ports. 

The lab was finally done, and everyone involved collapsed on the floor in a puddle of blood and sweat and tears. Except for Tony, who went down to his own lab and relished the first alone time he had in a year like a heathen.

**Author's Note:**

> Oof, so I was really procrastinating on this one, so sorry if the editing isn’t as good or something because I wrote a lot of this kinda last minute. Also I apologize for the backstory stuff and and the excess discription and we’ll be going back to whatever I was planning to write... soon.
> 
> I don’t know how to put photos into the story but I did draw a map of the lab so if somebody wants to see that I’m sure I can figure it out. (Update: Haven’t figures out how to put a photo in here BUT I did post it on tumblr so here ya go https://jackson-overland-frost.tumblr.com/post/183618908944/i-drew-a-map-of-the-parkner-lab-from-above-fanfic )
> 
> Please please please leaves comments and kudos- they feed my soul and my family :P love you all, and have a wonderful rest of your day! <3


End file.
